I'm no professional but I have a good bit of personal experience with mental health issues, so I'll throw in a few cents worth... First, don't let anyone discount your feelings - including any sort of dismissal that they can magically go away. Your feelings are real because they are your feelings - even if they are unhealthy. The first thing people should understand with any sort of mental health issue - including feeling like life is simply overwhelming and more than you can bear - is that dealing with it, properly, is hard work. It generally takes a lot of effort and/or a lot of time to knock us completely off our feet - so it makes sense that it should take some time and effort to stand back up. Second, we should understand the difference between tools and solutions. A tool is something that helps you complete a job. A solution is something that does the job for you. In mental health, there are no solutions - even medicine. Medicine, at best, is simply a tool. If we don't do the work, the job doesn't get done. Our focus shouldn't be on trying to find something - anything, including medicine or people - that can be a solution but on finding the right tools to help us get the job done. Finally, in my opinion, that job is figuring out how to handle our undue stress - whatever form it takes - in a healthy manner. Life is going to be stressful, painful, and difficult. The existence of stress, pain, and difficulty isn't a problem; being unable to handle them is a problem. Having your wife or another family member deal with cancer should hit you hard - it's a hard thing. Having stress over your job is natural. Feeling the pressure of life's daily expectations can be heavy but it should be normal. The things that I've seen help the most people the most significantly aren't big things, on their own, but a collection of little things that build up over time - allowing people to get back on their feet: - Finding sources of encouragement, to give yourself a boost. - Finding ways to escape discouragement (potentially including the act of excluding certain people, at least regularly). - Learning to recognize the signs of an internal overreaction - which pushes us closer to losing control. - Learning ways to prevent an internal overreaction. - Finding short-term tools that help us handle stress (medication often falls into this category). - Finding long-term tools that help us handle stress (this is often some sort of change in lifestyle or thought-process). - Finding sources of self-fulfillment as often as possible. - Finding ways to seek contentment and choose happiness in what we already have, rather than searching for something to make us happy.

Any barefoot (zero drop) lasts?

@Sean Kavanaugh Thank you, sir!

If anyone else wants to enter the challenge, the rules can be found here...

@Carl Ronny Birkeland Thank you, sir!

@William Feldtmose Thank you, sir!

An excellent entry, sir!